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Say you have this console or operating system which you are very much accustomed to. You more or less have everything made for the platform installed or on discs/cartridges, but there's this one game or application you wanted or needed so badly, but couldn't get as it was released on only a particular platform other than what you have. Sure enough, you can buy a new console or install an alternative OS, but that's a major barrier to entry for some who do not have the budget or just couldn't be bothered to get a certain device for the sole purpose of playing certain games.

As with No Export for You, No Port For You could be due to technical limitations, censorship, licensing or whatever complications that may arise with the release of a piece of software, or just limited resources, or for some inexplicable reason even if the platform the game wasn't released on has a significant market share. It could also apply to non-software pieces of digital media, like for example films not yet released on DVD or Blu-Ray. However it could also be due to "Exclusivity deals", which is basically corruption in all but name - a company paying a developer to make a game only exclusively for their platform (of course, the companies and fanbois will all argue that there is no law preventing this kind of deals to take place, and that unlike bribing a police officer, the company is merely paying the developer to create a piece of software for them).

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Expect many Arcade Games to fall under this, as many of them use specialized controllers that would be too expensive if they were faithfully made for the consumer market; the more economic alternatives would be to adapt the controls to a gamepad or produce a lower-budget version of the gimmick controller, often with clunky results either way.

Naturally, there are workarounds for this, like emulation for example; emulating more recent systems are a long shot however, but progress has been made with seventh-generation console emus such as Xenia, RPCS3 and Citra, and even with the Wii U starting to have emulation projects being made too. Fan-made ports do exist as well, especially for games whose source codes have been released in public domain or under a permissive licence.

Contrast with Multi-Platform and Reformulated Game, where games get versions or ports for multiple platforms at the time of its release (especially with licensed games). The complete polar opposite is Port Overdosed, where the game gets released on every platform under the sun the developer can think off, even if the platform is not a good fit.

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Examples:

American Girl is guilty of this - for no explicable reason other than mentioning on their Facebook page that they are comfortable with iOS development. Even if Android's market share "makes them attractive" they only released most of their recent games for Apple's mobile operating system.

This is compounded by the fact that the companion app for a toy television made for Maryellen Larkin is designed with regular-size iPad models in mind, since the TV playset essentially acts as a specialised case for the original model up to the iPad 4. While there are Android devices using a similar form factor, e.g. Goopads and models from lesser-known firms, they're few and far behind, and most tablets are just too small or odd-sized for it to fit inside the television.

Also, the comfort zone excuse is moot considering how the mobile games were written using cross-platform libraries like Adobe AIR or Unity for example. With the case of AIR all you have to do is to recompile the Flash project with little or no changes and set Android as a target, provided you have Android Studio installed. Whether American Girl was paid off by Apple to snub Android users or not is anyone's guess.

In general, anything put out by Mattel/Fisher-Price for the mobile platform tends to be this, if not a bad port that is several versions behind the iOS version, and all of their mobile accessories to date are for iDevices only. Many have speculated that they have an exclusivity deal with Apple.

Still an issue as of the recently released Wellie Wishers game, and that's despite AG's assurances of a port or two for other platforms, along with children's electronics firm Nabi (who were recently acquired by Mattel) releasing an American Girl-themed variant of their Nabi SE tablet. The latter would've given them an even bigger reason for them to port most of their games to Android, but strangely enough this hasn't been the case as of now.

Except that as it turns out, they did make a port of some of those games. The clincher is that not only it's exclusively available upon purchase of the American Girl-themed tablet, it is not available from other tablets in the series. How this is possible is a Riddle for the Ages given that the Nabi tablets are Google Play certified, and Google never allows any tablet that ships with an alternative app store to pass its certification process, let alone two app stores. But even more frustratingly, the Nabi is only officially sold in North America and Europe and not Asia.

While the original WellieWishers remains iOS exclusive, Garden Fun is available on both Android and iOS worldwide. Except that the Android port of the game became a Porting Disaster when it was first launched, crashing silently on a number of devices, and was even made worse with the 1.1 update, of which American Girl seemingly forgot to upload the updated OBB files for the game; this was later corrected in a recent hotfix.

Mobile apps based on the Fancy Nancy series are exclusive to iOS for whatever reason. Much like American Girl, ports for the other platform are nowhere to be found, though a dedicated fan or a savvy parent could just load up a ROM of the DS game and play it on an emulator.

Averted with the InterplayMarioedutainment games, which were released for Mac OS Classic, DOS and Windows 3.x.

Also averted with Pokémon, which despite being primarily indigenous to Nintendo's consoles, also saw several Android and iOS side-games and even an educational game for PCs and Macs. Titles even appeared for the Sega Pico, an educational console made by supposed rival Sega, long before Sega became a software-only company!

And while Pokémon received a mobile game in the form of the wildly-popular Pokémon GO, Super Mario Run marked their first in-house effort at developing games for smart devices. Initially developed for iOS platforms, a port for Android was released in 2017.

Microsoft used this trope as well, many of their games are exclusive to the Xbox and maybe ported to Windows, but are never available on OSes or platforms other than that, although in their early years, they had external developers do versions of their games to the Game Boy of all platforms. Same case with the Rockstar Games-published Monster Truck Madness for the Nintendo 64. Also, they've tried porting their Windows 8 Solitaire game, along with a number of other games and productivity applications to Android and iOS, mostly as Windows Phone/Mobile never took off in a marketplace dominated by Android and iOS.

And Sony. Forget about seeing LittleBigPlanet or Gran Turismo on any other platform, it's not going to happen. Though a number of side-games based on Sony-owned or published franchises did see releases on Android and iOS, namely Uncharted: Fortune Hunter and the Coca-Cola-sponsoredPlayStation All-Stars Island. Although this is largely because Sony also produces Android cellphones and also did a brand crossover once(read: the PlayStation Phone)

One of the many reasons why virtual machine software and Wine exist is with OS X, Linux and a myriad of Unix-based operating systems not getting a fair share of the pie, that is with most games and software e.g. productivity applications being released only for Microsoft Windows, a form of vendor lock-in.

On a technical standpoint, certain games would end up as being PC or "PS 360" exclusives mostly because of how infeasible it is to get it to run on a weaker console. This is why some developers tend to snub Nintendo's home consoles in favour of Sony or Microsoft. While Nintendo's rift with developers during the NES era may have accounted for this, the company's habit of intentionally developing underpowered hardware served as a barrier to entry for those intending to do a Wii U release. The N64's cartridge format lured the likes of Square Enix away from the platform, as titles like Final Fantasy VII just won't fit unabridged on a cart (the company's history of censoring games also played a role). And don't even think about a game on two or more carts either - PCBs and ROM chips are way too expensive to produce compared to pressing CDs. Some developers do avert this, however, up to some extent depending on the game and how ingenious the coders are, though the Wii U port of Watch_Dogs screams like Ubisoft shouldn't have bothered doing it at all.

Despite the GameCube having more computational power than the PS2, it was all but the worst-selling of its generation. Poor sales of many multiplatform games on GCN the meant that many companies stopped porting Xbox and PlayStation 2 games to the system after the first few years of its lifespan. Combined with the aforementioned "kiddy" reputation, many T and M-rated titles were released on the PS2 and Xbox, but not the GameCube. Probably the most iconic example of this was the fact that the GameCube was the only sixth-generation home console that never received a Grand Theft Auto gamenote A port of Grand Theft Auto III was in fact planned, but cancelled for unknown reasons. The T-rated Psychonauts was also skipped over for a GameCube port, where a wacky platformer like it would have fit right in, while it sold poorly on the platforms it was on.

Developers not porting games to GameCube can often be chalked up to disc size limitations. While the PS2 and Xbox both used DVDs for their primary format (which can hold up to 4.7GB of data on a single-layer disc), GameCube utilized a proprietary offshoot of the MiniDVD format (which can only hold 1.4GB of data on a single-layer disc). There were a lot of games that would need significant cuts or unacceptable levels of compression to play on Nintendo's system. Need for Speed: Carbon for one ended up having muddy textures that looked as if it came off a Nintendo 64 mostly due to having to fit every asset into a 1.5GB optical disc, which, to EA's credit, is a feat in itself considering how big the game was on other platforms. Other games such as those from the Splinter Cell series simply spanned all of their assets into two discs.

In spite of efforts by fans to coax Rockstar Games into releasing a Red Dead Redemption PC port, word has it that the codebase was messy enough to rule out a Windows release. Given how badly they screwed up with Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008, the latter isn't that far-fetched of an excuse. On the other hand, Red Dead Redemption was notoriously so full of bugs even on the platforms it was released on that they probably decided that revisiting the messy code to try to fix things was not worth it. Same goes with Midnight Club: Los Angeles and a few others.

Some genres don't seem to get any PC treatment whatsoever, or when they do, they're rather uncommon. See if you can name a few boxing, wrestling or Mixed Martial Arts games for Windows, let alone Mac or Linux. It could be either due to the genre being best played on the comfort of one's living room, or others tend to end up either unplayable or just plain awkward on a joystick or a keyboard.

Conversely, some genres like Real-Time Strategy or city-building games are generally PC-exclusive by default, because they're designed from the ground up to be played with mouse and keyboard, and trying to adapt their control scheme to a gamepad involves some very unhappy compromises at best. Not to mention some of the more complicated modern examples being very CPU and RAM intensive while putting a relatively small load on the graphics hardware, which is the exact opposite of optimal for console specs.

Though a number of games made with PC controls in mind such as Unreal Tournament came with support for keyboard and mouse controls when they were ported to consoles such as the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2.

This also accounts for why the console versions of The Sims end up being reworked to suit the platforms they were converted to.

The Spot the Dog mobile games are iOS exclusive as well. In fact, Penguin Interactive are only publishing for iOS devices.

Several of Hallmark's apps, especially the e-books for their Interactive Story Buddy toys, are iOS only as well, to the annoyance of Android-device-owning parents.

The main developer of PC game Mega Maker WreckingPrograms listed "mobile or console versions" among the "Deconfirmed Features". That means fans are never to request ports for consoles or for mobile phones.

Street Fighter V was released on both Windows and Linux, but as far as consoles are concerned, Capcom had a deal with Sony and thus an Xbox One release is unlikely so far, let alone the Wii U.

Conversely, Splinter Cell: Conviction only received an Xbox 360 version besides Windows, with Ubisoft citing the game series' being developed with the Xbox in mind since the original.

A number of Dead or Alive titles were exclusive to the Xbox, like Dead or Alive 3, Dead Or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball and Dead or Alive: Ultimate, a remake of the first two games. This was also the case with Dead or Alive 4 and Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 for the Xbox 360. The series became Multi-Platform once again upon the release of the fifth title, though there still are some exclusives, in this case for PlayStation consoles, namely Dead or Alive Paradise for the PSP and the Asia-onlyDead or Alive Xtreme 3 for the PS4 and Vita.

It has been confirmed by Nihon Falcom themselves that the third installment of the The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel games will be a PlayStation 4 exclusive, at least where the Japanese market is concerned. And to top it off, XSEED Games has been pretty mum about localizing the game for International audiences or porting it to the PC because they're focused on porting the second game to the PC at this time.

None of the Tetris: The Grand Master arcade games have ever been ported to a consumer platform. A PS2 port for Tetris: The Grand Master 2 was allegedly in the works only to be cancelled. This isn't Arika's fault, though: The Tetris Company' has a series of strict guidelines on what is allowed in a game carrying the Tetris brand and gameplay, and the TGM series goes blatantly outside of those guidelines, which unfortunately means that it is extremely unlikely there will ever be a port of any arcade TGM game. While there is Tetris: The Grand Master ACE, its adherence to the same guidelines (which were made after TGM 2 and were still quite lax when TGM 3 was released, but got very strict sometime between the releases of 3 and ACE) result in a drastically different and less challenging game than the arcade TGM games.

Aka to Blue is currently smartphone-exclusive with an arcade port in the works. The developers have stated that the costs of console development kits and the relative obscurity of Steam in Japan caused them to pass over more conventional consumer platforms.

While Onimusha is primarily a PlayStation franchise, the original game Onimusha: Warlords also received an Xbox port under the name Genma Onimusha, which featured a plethora of new content, including new costumes, increased difficulty, green souls which increase attack power, and new areas. Due to the 2019 remaster of the game not containing the content from this version, the Xbox (or the Xbox 360 through backwards compatibility) is still the only way to experience this version of the game.

Non-gaming examples:

While certain films did receive Blu-Ray releases, some titles are unfortunately stuck on DVD or perhaps even on VHS. In spite of Legend Films' efforts at remastering Shirley Temple's back catalogue, a high-def release seems out of the question at least for now.

Ditto with Baby Peggy - Undercrank Productions' recent release of a restored version of The Family Secret is only on DVD, and that's in spite of the Library of Congress bringing up the film's quality to par with Charlie Chaplin re-issues.

Also true with the documentary about her career entitled The Elephant in the Room. By the time of its release in 2012, surely an HD release isn't out of the question given the film's 16:9 aspect ratio.

This also applies to Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney  Spirit of Justice, which was 3DS-only when it was released in 2015. It was annoying because again, not only is the console is region-locked, but also digital-only in English-speaking markets, and there are many countries that do not have access to the eShop. An iOS version alongside an Android version was finally released into the world nearing the end of September 2017, with the same attention to details that Dual Destinies received when ported. However, there is two non-canon DLCs that isn't ported along with the rest of the game...

For a long while Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney and both Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth titles were only available on the Nintendo DS. It wasn't until December 2016 that they would receive ports to other platforms, with Apollo Justice getting a mobile port then and a 3DS port in November 2017. Both Investigations titles would get mobile ports on December 2017 (although with the second title still unlocalized).

Subverted with the so-called "timed exclusives", where a game would be contractually be released for only one or two platforms, but would later be ported to some other OS or platform. The expansion packs for Grand Theft Auto IV are an example of this.

Somehow averted with Sega, who are thoughtful enough to release ports of their games after keeping them a platform exclusive for their consoles for a while. A port for Sonic the Hedgehog CD came out for Windows as early as 1996, only three years after its original release, and a port for Sonic 3 & Knuckles came a year after. After that, a lot of their games are ported to Windows roughly 6 months to a year after their initial platform release. Even before that games are often released for both the Genesis with a toned down version for the Master System, and their arcade games already received conversions of varying quality to many 8-bit computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 a few months after release (albeit outsourced to porting houses) since the 80s. They even had Tengen convert several of their games to the NES, a console belonging to their supposed rival, long before they became a software-only publishing house! It's probably this mastery that helped keep Sega afloat when they abandoned their hardware business. See, Sega was and is still in the Arcade business long after Nintendo left the scene. Nintendo had largely left the Arcade business by the late 80s, and by the 90s their appearance in the arcade are thanks to a licensing deal with Bandai Namco Entertainment with no direct involvements. And Sega learned one thing from the arcade business, that is "the real money comes from ports of your games"- not bad for a company who incompetently screwed up their home console business on a regular basis from the late 90s onwards.

For a good while, the The BBC iPlayer wasn't made available to the Xbox 360 due to UK licensing laws. Microsoft wanted to lock all video streaming services behind the Xbox Live Gold subscription service but the BBC, if they allowed the iPlayer on the platform, were and still are legally forbidden to charge for UK access to their content as the content charge is already part of the TV license fee. It was eventually averted and the Xbox got their own version that was available to all Xbox Live members including Silver (non-paying users).

The arcade versions of the Donkey Kong trilogy, the original Mario Bros., Popeye, and other Nintendo games were never ported in their original state due to legal complications of Nintendo using Ikegami Tsushinki's Donkey Kong code for their other games. The NES versions were often the ones being released on modern platforms. It is not until the Nintendo Switch came out where Hamster Corporation gained access to some of these games and ported them under Nintendo's license for the Arcade Archives series.

Raiden V was initially an Xbox One exclusive, an odd choice given that the Raiden series is made by Japanese producers and "commercial failure" is a very polite way of describing how successful the Xbox One is in Japan. However, an Updated Re-release later came to PS4 and PC.

The Resident Evil 1 remake, along with Resident Evil 0 and Resident Evil 4, were all initially announced as GameCube-exclusives. While RE4 ended being just a timed-exclusive before it got ported to the PS2 less than a year after its initial release, REmake and RE0 actually remained exclusive to Nintendo consoles for many years, with the only ports of either game being the Wii versions released in 2008. It wasn't until 2014 (12 years after its original GameCube release) that Capcom announced that REmake would be remastered on non-Nintendo platforms, first getting a stand-alone physical release on the PS3 in Japan at the end of the year, followed by a worldwide digital release on five different platforms (Steam, PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360) in early 2015. RE0 followed suit with a digital release on the same five platforms in early 2016.

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